Włodzimierz Pawlak

BORN 1957, Korytów k/ Żyrardowa

Between 1982-1989, Pawlak created “painted-over paintings,” inspired by the way the political police tried to fight anti-government slogans painted on walls. Since 1989, he has continued a series called Journals, for which he received the Grand Prix of the 22nd International Painting Festival in Cagnes sur Mer in 1990. In 1982-1992, he was a member of the neo-expressionist collective Gruppa which revolutionised the Polish painting idiom of the 1980s, introducing nonchalance, mockery, and innovative formal solutions to it. Włodzimierz Pawlak graduated from Prof. Rajmund Ziemski’s studio at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in 1985. Between 1986-2007, he ran the Studio of Painting and Drawing at the Warsaw academy’s Faculty of Industrial Design.

Journal E/105

“Monday: me. Tuesday: me. Wednesday: me,” Pawlak seems to be repeating after Witold Gombrowicz. His Journals are a personal and highly vivid documentation of successive days. "The contemporary painter has learned to decompose the visible world into its elements of colour and line from which he elaborates a new and arbitrary composition. I do more or less the same thing, although my world is never totally decomposed,” says Gombrowicz in A Kind of Testament. Pawlak relates to this mode of thinking about art – the pure colours and expressive colour schemes of his paintings do not form a separate narrative, their nature is abstract and very much arbitrary. At the same time, they can be viewed as documentation of the process of analysing the language of painting, an analysis full of references to the medium’s history.

Journal E/161

“Monday: me. Tuesday: me. Wednesday: me,” Pawlak seems to be repeating after Witold Gombrowicz. His Journals are a personal and highly vivid documentation of successive days. "The contemporary painter has learned to decompose the visible world into its elements of colour and line from which he elaborates a new and arbitrary composition. I do more or less the same thing, although my world is never totally decomposed,” says Gombrowicz in A Kind of Testament. Pawlak relates to this mode of thinking about art – the pure colours and expressive colour schemes of his paintings do not form a separate narrative, their nature is abstract and very much arbitrary. At the same time, they can be viewed as documentation of the process of analysing the language of painting, an analysis full of references to the medium’s history.

Journal E/203

“Monday: me. Tuesday: me. Wednesday: me,” Pawlak seems to be repeating after Witold Gombrowicz. His Journals are a personal and highly vivid documentation of successive days. "The contemporary painter has learned to decompose the visible world into its elements of colour and line from which he elaborates a new and arbitrary composition. I do more or less the same thing, although my world is never totally decomposed,” says Gombrowicz in A Kind of Testament. Pawlak relates to this mode of thinking about art – the pure colours and expressive colour schemes of his paintings do not form a separate narrative, their nature is abstract and very much arbitrary. At the same time, they can be viewed as documentation of the process of analysing the language of painting, an analysis full of references to the medium’s history.

Dziennik E/229

“Monday: me. Tuesday: me. Wednesday: me,” Pawlak seems to be repeating after Witold Gombrowicz. His Journals are a personal and highly vivid documentation of successive days. "The contemporary painter has learned to decompose the visible world into its elements of colour and line from which he elaborates a new and arbitrary composition. I do more or less the same thing, although my world is never totally decomposed,” says Gombrowicz in A Kind of Testament. Pawlak relates to this mode of thinking about art – the pure colours and expressive colour schemes of his paintings do not form a separate narrative, their nature is abstract and very much arbitrary. At the same time, they can be viewed as documentation of the process of analysing the language of painting, an analysis full of references to the medium’s history.

Journal E/245

“Monday: me. Tuesday: me. Wednesday: me,” Pawlak seems to be repeating after Witold Gombrowicz. His Journals are a personal and highly vivid documentation of successive days. "The contemporary painter has learned to decompose the visible world into its elements of colour and line from which he elaborates a new and arbitrary composition. I do more or less the same thing, although my world is never totally decomposed,” says Gombrowicz in A Kind of Testament. Pawlak relates to this mode of thinking about art – the pure colours and expressive colour schemes of his paintings do not form a separate narrative, their nature is abstract and very much arbitrary. At the same time, they can be viewed as documentation of the process of analysing the language of painting, an analysis full of references to the medium’s history.

Note on Art no. 19

Włodzimierz Pawlak’s painting series brings to mind entries from a painter’s sketchbook. The individual pieces were a field of investigations, experiments, and studies for the artist. “Pawlak strives to define the original, primary characteristics of a painting, for which purpose he creates a sort of painted treaty on painting which gathers knowledge about the ways, means, and properties of representation. He copies, systematises, and analyses the work of classic avant-garde painters who contributed most to painting theory,” writes Agnieszka Szewczyk about Pawlak’s work. Numerous references to the work of Kazimir Malevich and Władysław Strzemiński can be discerned throughout the series.

Note on Art

Włodzimierz Pawlak’s painting series brings to mind entries from a painter’s sketchbook. The individual pieces were a field of investigations, experiments, and studies for the artist. “Pawlak strives to define the original, primary characteristics of a painting, for which purpose he creates a sort of painted treaty on painting, which gathers knowledge about the ways, means, and properties of representation. He copies, systematises, and analyses the work of classic avant-garde painters who contributed most to painting theory,” writes Agnieszka Szewczyk about Pawlak’s work. Numerous references to the work of Kazimir Malevich and Władysław Strzemiński can be discerned throughout the series.

Note on Art no. 47

Włodzimierz Pawlak’s painting series brings to mind entries from a painter’s sketchbook. The individual pieces were a field of investigations, experiments, and studies for the artist. “Pawlak strives to define the original, primary characteristics of a painting, for which purpose he creates a sort of painted treaty on painting, which gathers knowledge about the ways, means, and properties of representation. He copies, systematises, and analyses the work of classic avant-garde painters who contributed most to painting theory,” writes Agnieszka Szewczyk about Pawlak’s work. Numerous references to the work of Kazimir Malevich and Władysław Strzemiński can be discerned throughout the series.